


if you were a vegetable, you'd be a cutecumber

by Dialux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Allergies, Alternate Universe - High School, Crack, F/M, Fight Club - Freeform, Fluff and Humor, tbh this entire thing is just plain crack and i'm not even surprised at myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 13:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, far too rapidly to actually be taken seriously. Then, in a somewhat lackluster bid to lessen the damnation in that sentence, he continues: “What are you talking about?”[a love story told in four parts, containing antique cars, clandestine fight clubs, cooking failures, romantic haikus, football groupies, and hairlike-moonlight]





	if you were a vegetable, you'd be a cutecumber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on tumblr: "highschool au where Jon really wants to ask Sansa to the winter dance and asks Robb, Arya, and Sam advice on how to ask her. None of them provide helpful advice and Jon decides to wing it during their botany class. Puns & fluff ensue," with copious amounts of artistic license taken because it turns out that I cannot answer prompts properly.

 

**...**

**i. part the first: in which Robb makes inappropriate references at inappropriate venues to inappropriate people**

**...**

“So,” Jon says.

Robb grunts something incomprehensible and straightens. There’s a streak of motor oil over one cheekbone, and the wild, frenzied sort of glee that turns his face into something more suited for a sticky-fisted six year old. 

He’s been looking forwards to fixing up his uncle Benjen’s old car for nearly two years, and over the summer he finally managed to get his hands over it. Problem is that the car was supposed to be finished fixing up by summer’s end- it’s November, now, and the car’s still looking as beat-up as ever.

“You said something?”

“I- yeah.” Jon swallows, yanking himself back to the present. “Listen, you know how they announced the dance last week?”

“The winter dance?” Robb swipes at his cheek, but it only smears the oil more. “Yeah. Figured I’d ask Jeyne.”

“Westerling?” Jon asks startled.

Robb snorts, shaking his head. “She’s not exactly happy with me.”

“Still mad about that fight with her mom?”

“Well,” he says. “I think so, yeah. But, I mean, to be fair, it’s not only her. I’m pretty sure her mother would kill me if I ever spoke to her again.” He screws his face up, voice going higher in a terrible attempt at mimicry. “Robb _Stark._ You ought to be in some more _academic_ pursuits don’t you think, darling? Live up to your family’s words and reputation.”

Jon exhales slowly. If there’s one thing Robb hates, it’s being told to live up to his family name. Little wonder; after almost eighteen years of being told that, almost constantly, anyone would have tired of it. The only question now is what Robb replied with, because an angry Robb is a stupid Robb.

“What did you say?” He asks slowly.

Robb bares his teeth. “I told her that I’ve been _trying_ to live up to my family’s words, but her daughter’s not exactly helping me.” His hands jerk down, in a fairly evocative gesture, and Jon chokes.

“If you did _that_ as well-”

“Winter is coming,” he says flatly. “She just told me that I should live up to that, and I chose to interpret it as I wanted. Winter is coming, I _want_ to be coming-”

“-you say that to me one more time and I’ll take a wrench to the car.”

Finally, Robb sighs. “But. Yes. I’ll probably take Jeyne Poole- she doesn’t have a date yet, and she was planning to go stag. We can have fun. And Jeyne- Westerling- knows it’s not anything serious, so...” he shrugs. “You?”

“I,” Jon says, mouth suddenly dry.

There’s a difference between ribbing Robb about his love life and telling him about his own feelings. It’s taken Jon a full week to work up the guts to even come here, and it seems that last little bit of courage is failing him now.

“It’s just,” he tries, because maybe a different sentence will help him get the words out, “you know.” He frowns. “I, ah. There’s this-”

“Spit it out,” Robb tells him.

“-IreallylikeSansa.” 

Jon breathes, after that, simply trying not to hyperventilate. Robb looks unreadable for a long minute, his face set in the same lines that his mother tended to use- then the mask cracks away.

“’bout time,” he snorts. 

_Wait._

“What?”

“You’re an idiot,” Robb announces, closing the car’s hood with a decisive thump. “Everyone knew it, Jon. Watching Sansa like a fucking _puppy-”_

“Asshole,” Jon says, outraged. “I haven’t once given you shit for you and Jeyne-”

“Jeyne’s not your sister!”

“-least you could do is not call me a fucking  _puppy,_ as if-”

“-I can still take you in a fight, Snow, don’t think I won’t-”

 _“-fine,”_ he says, throwing his hands up. Robb’s just dickish enough to refuse to help Jon if he feels insulted, and that’s where this is going to head if he doesn’t stop it. “Anyways. That’s not why I came here.”

Robb lifts an eyebrow. “Needed my permission?”

“Don’t have my head that far up my ass yet.” Jon shudders at the thought. “Nah, I wanted- help. If I, you know, was to ask Sansa. To the dance. Hypothetically. What’d she like?”

“Why’d you think I’d know anything?” Robb asks. 

“You live in the same _house,”_ Jon says incredulously. “Your rooms are next to each other. It’s a pretty simple leap to take, I’d think, you know?”

Robb shrugs. “Pretty sure the last time I talked to Sansa about guys I punched her boyfriend in the face. She hasn’t told me anything after that. Shocker, I know, but she can be weird like that.” 

Jon slumps against the car, adrenaline draining out of his system. “Joffrey?”

“Hmm?”

“The boyfriend that you punched- was it Joffrey?”

“Yeah.” 

And now Jon can’t even blame Robb, not for punching Joffrey in the face. That fucker deserved it. If Robb hadn’t gotten twenty hours community service- that, after lots of interference from his dad- then Jon would’ve probably done the same.

He sighs, disheartened, and rubs at his arms- it’s November, and though it’s an unseasonably warm day, it’s also cold enough to leave goosebumps. For a long moment, he wonders if it’d be better to just abandon the idea altogether.

“Wait- she was talking with Jeyne the other day,” Robb says suddenly. “Something about- something about tulips. She’d probably like some nice flowers.”

...

 **Jon:** you’re sure it was tulips right

 **Robb:** wtf

 **Robb:** for what bro

 **Jon:** flowers.

 **Jon:** for sansa. 

 **Jon:** that you were telling me about??? like two days ago???

 **Robb:** oh

 **Robb:** yeah, no, think it was tulips

 **Robb:** pretty sure it was tulips.

...

Tulips, apparently, give Sansa hives the size of large coins.

...

Jon doesn’t talk to Robb for another week.

**...**

**ii. part the second: in which Jon is punched, and, also, Arya cannot bake**

**...**

Were Jon to confess his plan to anyone, he knows what people would say: Plan A would probably work, Plan B is a good, decent back-up, and Plan C is a travesty that only an idiot or a madman would come up with.

Problem is that Plan A- Robb- didn’t work. And Plan B- Sam- is getting swamped with his volunteering at the library and hospital; Jon hasn’t seen him in weeks. 

So Plan C it is: _Arya._

Thing is, Arya knows Sansa quite well. They might spend every hour of every day bitching at each other about anything under the sun, but the knowledge of how to perfectly get under someone’s skin requires a degree of intimacy, and there’s nobody in all the world who can irritate Sansa quicker and easier than Arya.

If Jon can get her in on it, the plan can go well.

It’s the getting her in on it that’s just plain difficult.

Or, rather: stopping her from shrieking loud enough to scare corpses ten miles away when Jon first tells her about his crush.

“No,” she starts out, steadily gearing into the ear-splitting scream that’s been trained into her with years of soccer practice, “no, I don’t want to _know,_ it’s so disgusting, ew, _Jon what is the matter with you,_ oh my god, I need brain bleach-” Arya pauses, breathes in, and continues: “-do they even sell that? I’m gonna be brainwashed and turned into an assassin aren’t I, this is _all your fault-”_

“Maybe,” Jon interrupts, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at her. “But, to be honest, that might be an improvement.”

“Why’d you tell me?” She wails. “Why couldn’t you let me live in _peace_ damn you-”

“Because I needed your help, _Arya,”_ Jon raps out. “Which I might have gotten to, you know, before you burst my eardrums.”

She blinks at him. “You needed my help?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I went to Robb first, you know, and he suggested flowers.”

“Wait a minute.” Realization dawns on her face, mixing with sheer glee. “You didn’t. You were the one who sent those tulips?”

“It was an accident,” Jon says, dignifiedly. 

Arya’s jaw drops. “Sansa refused to go to school for two days, the hives were that bad.”

“A mistake,” Jon repeats, half-helplessly.

“An amazing mistake,” she says.

“But a mistake.” He rallies, or tries to in the face of the human hurricane that’s Arya. “Which is why I need help to ask Sansa for the dance. I’ve got three weeks, Arya, I need some ideas.”

Arya narrows her eyes at him. “What’s in it for me?”

“What?”

“You and Sansa get a date. What am I getting out of helping you?”

“Well,” says Jon, “what do you want?”

...

(Jon’s an idiot sometimes.)

...

It’s how he finds himself in a basement- or, he thinks it’s a basement, it could be an abandoned warehouse or a boarded-up mansion or a-

Yeah, he watches crime thrillers sometimes, and _yes_ he might find them creepy and horrific, and _fine_ there was that one night when he slept with, like, all the lights on in his bedroom because talking about dead babies always manages to fuck up his head- but the point is that he’s in a bare-concrete room with bleachers set up along two ends and a couple lights in the middle, and the only reason for his presence is Arya.

Arya, who’s apparently joined their small town’s version of f _ight club_ without anyone’s knowledge.

Jon might have handled it better were she not the first person in the ring. But Arya leaves him to the mercy of fifteen strangers- all, Jon notes, with a vague tinge of hysteria, about a foot taller than him and twice as heavy- and joins in the ring.

It’s a disaster.

Not Arya’s fighting- she’s small, maybe, but scrappy and also has the pointiest elbows ever to be made; Jon’s actually wondered if she sharpens the bone because nobody has such natural needle-shaped elbows- and not the man she’s fighting, either. It’s the guys opposite him who are trash-talking her that make the slow slide of dread in his stomach blossom into reality.

“Beat her!” One of them roars, almost straight into Jon’s ear. “Beat the little bitch into the ground!”

Now- it’s just that- well-

Jon’s spent a long time with the Starks, and he really sees Arya as a younger sister. He doesn’t want to start anything. He _really_ doesn’t want to start anything.

But calling his little sister a bitch also happens to rank high on his shitlist, so Jon’s in a dilemma. In the end, he decides to resolve it quietly.

“Hey, dude,” he interjects, between the guy’s ear-deafening cries, “mind if you lay off Arya for a while?”

The guy looks at him, raises an eyebrow- which, _hey,_ Jon might not be six feet or anywhere close but he’s not scrawny, alright?- and turns away resolutely, ignoring him.

Arya twists in midair, wrapping her thighs around her opponent’s throat and forcing him down, and the guy erupts into a flurry of curses at her, turning red enough that Jon’s worried he’ll march down to do something to Arya.

...if Arya’s Jon’s little sister, then he’s her big brother, right?

And isn’t it the duty of the elder brother to protect the younger sister?

 _Crap,_ Jon thinks, misery flooding him. _I hate my life._

But Jon Snow’s not a coward, not ever, so he gets up, sets his feet as Ned Stark once taught him, and throws quite possible the most perfect punch he’ll ever throw, straight at the guy’s jaw.

“What the fuck,” the man says, turning to look at Jon.

“I said,” says Jon, “lay off Arya.”

...

“Why?” 

Jon wakes to a screaming Arya, a throbbing pain across the middle of his face, and the rough jostle of a car under his back. He groans, slightly, and Arya twists in her seat to look at him.

“Why?” She demands, again. “Why, Jon, _why would you do that?”_

“Do what?” It takes him a moment, but the memory returns. He winces. “Wait a mi’ute.”

“You punched him,” Arya says, ignoring him. “You _punched_ him. For no reason! You ought to feel lucky that they didn’t actually break anything more than your nose!”

“We don’t know that,” says another person- a guy, Jon realizes, the person who’s actually driving the car. He looks at Jon through the rearview mirror. “You could have some broken ribs, though I think they’re just slightly bruised.”

“How do you ‘ow that?”Jon demands. “Did you _check?”_

The guy shrugs. “You looked pretty beat up. Had to make sure we didn’t have to take you to the hospital, you know? Have to say, though, I didn’t expect the tattoo.”

“Accide’t,” Jon grits out, struggling to sit up. 

There’s crusted blood around his nose and mouth, and a tenderness around the left side of his jaw. But the guy’s right- Jon can breathe, and though it hurts to breathe too deeply, it isn’t that bad. Hopefully the ribs aren’t cracked, just bruised, though with the way his luck has been recently, he’s not really holding much hope out for it.

“How do you accidentally get a tattoo?” 

“Ygritte,” he grunts. 

“It might be better if you didn’t make him talk,” Gendry mutters under his breath, but both Jon and Arya ignore him with all the ease of two people who’ve spent years with siblings.

“She gave you a tattoo?” Arya asks flatly.

“Her asshole frie’ds,” Jon replies, and _gods_ his voice is already annoying him, “got me dru’k, took me to a studio. Put some s’owflake thi’g on my chest.”

Snow- Snowflake- it’s not a particularly subtle dig, not when Ygritte spent half their relationship ribbing him about how he was a _special fucking snowflake._ It’s pretty much ninety percent of the reason why they broke up, actually: she refused to see it as anything other than a joke, and Jon hadn’t been able to forgive that. 

The other ten percent had been Jon’s fashion style, but that’s neither here nor there.

And the tattoo itself isn’t that bad: it’s small, easily covered up, and kinda elegant, after a fashion. It’s grown on him.

“We’re taking you home,” Arya tells him. “You have some Advil there?”

“Mom always keeps some, yeah.”

“Then take, like, two,” the guy says, turning onto Jon’s lane. “And put some ice on your ribs- also, probably, your face. You’ve got two black eyes, dude. It hurts to just look at you.”

Jon groans. “I should just fill my tub with ice.”

“Yeah, and get hypothermia.” Arya still sounds irritable when she undoes her seatbelt and steps out of the car, opening the backdoor to drag Jon out. He hisses out through his teeth when his feet hit the ground- _wow,_ there’s a difference between sitting and standing, and even _more_ wow, there’s a difference between standing and walking. 

Arya pretty much steers him into his house, shoving the Advil tablets into his hand and then just drowns him in ice. 

Which doesn’t even make sense. The painkillers must be getting to him. 

His phone rings, a few minutes after she leaves.  Jon groans, leaning over to grab it.

 **Arya:** so you can come over tomorrow if you’re up for it

 **Jon:** for what

 **Jon:** idk if i’m getting out of bed for another week

 **Jon:** also where did you find a fight club

 **Jon:** still not sure why you dragged me there 

 **Arya:** gendry brought me in

 **Arya:** he’s the guy who dropped you off

 **Arya:** and i didn’t think you’d punch someone for no reason

 **Jon:** i had a reason alright 

 **Jon:** they kept calling you a bitch

 **Arya:** omg you idiot it’s called trashtalking and everyone does it

 **Arya:** even me. 

 **Arya:** wow i thought robb would be worse but turns out you’re a bigger moron than him lmao

 **Arya:** anyways i wanted to tell you if you want to ask sansa you can come over tomorrow 

 **Jon:** with all the bruises i have? your mom won’t let me through the door

 **Arya:** nah she’ll be fine with it

 **Arya:** you can just sneak in

 **Arya:** stay in the kitchen i guess

 **Jon:** why would i even be in the kitchen i hate cooking

 **Arya:** we’re making lemoncakes jon

 **Arya:** sansa likes lemoncakes. we’ll do something in frosting 

 **Jon:** frosting?

 **Arya:** idk you’re the one who wants gooey romantic shit

 **Jon:**...that’s actually a good idea

 **Jon:** k thanks

...

The next day, he heads to the Starks’ home. He sneaks in through the back door- Arya’s already waiting in the kitchen, looking impatient.

“Took you long enough,” she mutters, as he hauls his poor, bruised body into the Starks’ pristine kitchen. “Now. I guess we start with the flour? That’s what this website says.”

“The one I read said we should start by mixing the butter and the sugar.”

“Well, you’re high on Advil, so you’re not a reliable source,” Arya tells him, and promptly dumps a mountain of flour into the bowl. 

“Shouldn’t we. I mean. Measure that?”

“Mom doesn’t,” she says, reaching for the eggs.

Jon winces when she cracks them, but Arya’s actually pretty good at it. There aren’t any bits of eggshell floating about there, at least. He sighs- in point of fact, he rather wishes he _was_ high on painkillers, because at least then he wouldn’t have to deal with his body, which is feeling less human and more like a giant throbbing bruise.

He slumps over a counter and sighs as Arya continues to do the whole thing. She tells him to hold some things, or to help pour some other stuff, but overall he just rests his head on the marble countertop and tries to stop the ache in his head.

“Hey,” Arya says, after a beat. She closes the oven door and turns, arching an eyebrow at him. “You can watch this, right? Just turn the oven off when the timer rings. Isn’t that hard.”

Jon waves a hand, nodding, and she leaves- likely to get away from him and his bleary eyes. Arya’s patience for social interaction only lasts for so long, and he hadn’t really expected her to do half of what she’d already done.

He drifts off in the clean, sharp-lemon scent of the kitchen. When the timer goes off, he sighs and drags himself upright, turning the oven off and then opening it.

There’s a wave of hot air that prickles his arms, and when he looks inside-

Jon feels his stomach drop to about six feet below the ground.

“Arya,” he says. Then, louder:  _“Arya!”_

She runs in a moment later, looking faintly panicked, though it fades when she sees him at the door. 

“What’s the problem?” She asks. 

“Look.”

“The cake-”

“You didn’t use glass,” Jon tells her. “You didn’t use metal. You used _plastic,_ Arya, in an oven. Of course it melted, the tray’s gone and solidified on the floor!”

Her eyes slowly widen. Then she steps forwards, reaching for the plastic before thinking better of it and grabbing a glove.

“The tray’s gone to shit,” she mutters, “but the cake’s not actually that bad. The bottom’s burned pretty bad, but we can cut it off, right?”

“Wasn’t there something about the lemon syrup?” Jon asks.

Arya nods, grabbing her phone from the nearby counter and flipping through it. “Yeah, something about mixing sugar- _granulated,_ apparently, whatever the fuck that means- with the lemon juice until everything melts together. We have to pour it on the cake when everything’s done.”

“Fine,” he says. “Cut off the burned parts, then, and I’ll work on the syrup.”

...

“Is this a joke?” 

Jon, hiding about five feet away, winces at Sansa’s flat delivery.

“No,” Arya says, sounding uncertain. “Why?”

“Well,” Sansa says, slowly, “you forgot the sugar.” She coughs a little. “I think you put salt instead.”

Jon frowns, a sudden realization gripping him, and pads over to the kitchen- silently, so Sansa doesn’t know his presence- where he picks the jar he’d used to make the lemon syrup.

He tastes one of the granules, and stifles a groan.

How was he supposed to know that granulated sugar looks exactly like sea salt?

Arya walks into the kitchen a moment later, looking at him accusingly.

“If you promise not to tell anyone about the salt thing,” Jon says, before she can speak, “I won’t talk about the plastic tray.”

“Deal,” she says, and that’s the end of that.

**...**

**iii. part the third: in which Sam is, really, the most emotionally mature person Jon knows**

**...**

The end, that is, of Jon’s attempts to woo Sansa with Arya’s help.

He’s getting desperate now, that’s the point, which means pulling out the big guns. 

You see, Jon’s known a sum total of four romantic people in his life: his father, who miraculously manages to be both embarrassing and terrifying at once with the way he passive-aggressively plays his harp; Edmure Tully, who taught him history last year and might be a good person to ask were he not Sansa’s _uncle;_ Sansa herself, which is simultaneously worrying and a large part of why he likes her; and Sam.

Sam, who’s working like a madman, juggling work and volunteering and somehow four AP courses- Jon hasn’t seen him since, like, _October,_ and the times that he has, Sam’s looked like a hunted animal more than an actual, living, breathing human.

Jon feels some guilt when he drives to Sam’s house that night.

But. 

He’s desperate.

...

About fifteen minutes later, Jon’s sitting in Sam’s room.

“-and I don’t know what to _do,”_ he finishes, half-breathless from the rant.

Sam looks at him for a long minute.

“What?”

“Just wondering,” he says, shoulders lifting, “why do you think I have any advice for you?”

Jon shrugs. “You’ve been with Gilly for, what, two years now? And you’re still going strong.”

“Yeah, and she asked me out,” Sam tells him. “I’m just saying, I don’t have loads of practical experience. But I’d probably give her some chocolates- everyone likes chocolate, right?- and just ask her up-front. Nobody likes huge drama, Jon, not for stuff that’s meant to be private.”

“So.” Jon blinks at him. “Chocolate?”

“Did you hear _anything_ of what I just said?” Sam asks, but Jon doesn’t answer him, not properly. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Chocolate. I guess.”

...

There’s a small chocolate shop on the way to school. They even write personalized cards, with cute pictures on them.

Jon spends half the night before thinking about what to write. By the time he’s decided, there’s more paper on the floor than carpet. He takes so long, in fact, that he sleeps through his alarm the next morning and has to skip breakfast if he’s going to get the chocolate cookies on time.

When he skids into the shop, he’s sure he’s bright red from all the tension.

“I’ll have a dozen of the chocolate cookies,” Jon tells the shop-keeper. “And, ah, one of your cards- like, this one-” he plucks one of a hand-painted sunrise off of the rack and places it on the table, and then slides the written message he’d agonized so much over the previous night, “-so could you put this message on them?”

> _Flowers of flour-_
> 
> _Because you didn’t deserve_
> 
> _those tulips. I’m sorry._

It’s quirky. 

It’s cute.

It’s got a really nice play on words in the first damn sentence and segues smoothly into an apology and it also happens to be damn _memorable,_ alright, Jon deserves a hundred awards for his poetry skills.

...though now that he’s properly awake, that poem looks less like a nice attempt at an apology and more creepy.

But before he can communicate these doubts to the shop-owner, the card is finished, the chocolate-coated cookies are bagged, and he’s being asked to pay.

“Yeah, sure, keep the change,” he says, drops a twenty, and leaves before he can lose his nerve.

In the school, he drops the card into Sansa’s locker, though he has to wait to stash the chocolates- they’re a bit too big to fit through the slots. Jon takes up an unobtrusive position nearby and pretends to be leafing through his textbook.

Sansa arrives as she usually does, at her usual time, though she looks a bit harassed by Arya- who’s looking downright irritable- and, startlingly, a fuming Robb. Jon frowns and settles further into the corner, just in time to hide himself when Sansa shakes off both of her siblings with what seems to be a sharp word, and heads to her locker.

Where, out of absolute thin air, Harry Hardyng steps forwards.

“Sansa Stark!” He announces, not so much to Sansa as to the freshman boys who look at both Harry and everything he deems worthy of his attention with absolute awe- “You are a beautiful, brilliant girl, and I would be honored to take you to the Winter Ball.”

There’s a beat of silence, in which Jon starts to feel sick inside. At the same time, Sansa manages to cycle through roughly seven emotions- confusion, disbelief, shock, amusement, disgust, anger, and resignation- Jon’s impressed at himself for recognizing those, honestly- before she controls herself.

“I’m sorry,” she says politely. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake?”

“What mistake?” Harry asks, still smiling blindingly wide.

Sansa pulls her lips into a thin smile. “I never asked you to the dance,” she tells him. 

“Of course not! I-” he waves at himself, “-am asking you.”

Jon gets up, moving swiftly through the crowd. Screw the cookies and card; Jon knows Sansa, and though she doesn’t usually show her temper, she _does_ have one, and that flush creeping up the back of her neck is one of her tells. He’s not going to let any asshole make Sansa out to be the bitchy one of their interaction. Not when her reputation matters so much to her.

“That is not asking,” Sansa is saying, voice sharp enough to shave the fucker clean, when Jon steps out of the crowd.

“Heya,” he says, hooking his hands in his pockets. Then, ignoring Harry, Jon goes on: “Ms. Mormont wanted to talk to you, Sansa.”

Her brows pull together. “Now?”

“She said it was urgent.” 

Jon rocks backward on his heels, grins smugly, and finally deigns to give Harry a supremely indifferent look before turning back to Sansa.

“Come on,” he tells her, and guides Sansa by her wrist to the science block. 

If he knows Harry Hardyng at all, he knows that he won’t stop if he realizes that Jon just chose a teacher that neither Sansa nor Jon have ever had to make up a completely random excuse, so Jon doesn’t hesitate to fiddle with the doorknob to a chemistry classroom’s supply closet until it jams open- these doors are old, and he’s not quite above using that to his advantage.

When he closes the door behind him, he turns around and comes face to face- or, rather, nose to nose- with Sansa.

The closet’s dark enough that he can’t see much more than the curve of her face and reflection from her eyes, but he’s pretty sure that she’s smiling.

“I’m guessing Mormont didn’t want to talk to me?”

“I haven’t ever spoken to her,” Jon admits.

Sansa laughs, low and rolling. When she speaks, the amusement is still there in her voice, though it’s weighted with something approaching- not yet there, though, thankfully- annoyance. “You didn’t need to step in, though. I could’ve handled him.”

“Yeah,” he says. “but you would’ve totally destroyed him,and then his groupies would’ve gotten angry, and then they would’ve said stuff that would’ve pissed you off even more.”

“So you decided to nip that in the bud?”

“Hey, I’m sure that if you go back there right now Harry Hardyng will be waiting,” Jon says, and Sansa exhales, one hand settling behind him on the door handle.

“Think it’s safe yet?”

“Probably,” Jon starts to say- then he hears the muffled sound of footsteps, and flinches, his own hand snaking behind him to catch Sansa’s wrist before she can depress the handle. “Wait- no- there’s someone there-”

The shift in position brings him closer to Sansa, enough that he can feel the wash of her breath along his jaw, enough that he can smell the faint traces of the perfume she’s used forever. A moment later, the bell rings out, and he frowns, fumbling for his phone to check the time.

Sansa’s phone lights up the dark interior before he can get it. 

“Tardy bell,” she says, eyes flicking up to meet his. 

“Shit,” Jon replies. 

The school’s trying out a new policy: hall passes. They’re not really a revolutionary idea, but because of recent implementation the hall monitors are really zealous about catching everyone who’s out of class without permission from a teacher.

“Yeah,” Sansa says, her phone shadowing the upper planes of her face eerily. “I have Lannister, too, and you know how he is about his tardy policy.”

“I- yeah. Isn’t he the one who slapped Joffrey when he kept being tardy?”

She snorts. “To be fair, he probably wouldn’t have slapped anyone else for being tardy.”

“So, guess we’re stuck here then,” Jon says, and nods to the deeper parts of the closet. It’s dark and cramped, and he can see some sticky blue thing on the floor. “Could you see if there’s something to sit on? If we’re going to be here for some time, I mean, it just makes sense.”

“Hang on,” she replies, turning to look through the shelves. The outside of her hip presses into the meat of Jon’s thigh, and he swallows, hard, abruptly glad she’s not actually looking at him. “Yeah, there’re some buckets- I think they’re empty. Guess we can use them?”

“Yeah, sure.” He’s more focused on not saying anything stupid, to be honest. 

It takes some maneuvering, between the two of them, because the closet really is _that_ cramped and they have to make sure not to tip anything over that might call attention to them. Both of them aren’t small people, either; there’s not enough space to stretch out their legs, so they end up with legs slotted together, one of Sansa’s between Jon’s and one of Jon’s between hers. 

After a long silence, Jon looks at her over the top of his phone.

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” he says, quietly. She looks up at him, startled, and he elaborates. “For stepping in. I assumed-”

“Oh, god, don’t apologize for that,” Sansa says, eyes rolling dramatically. “I mean, Harry’s, like, the original fuckboy, you know? So pretentious- he actually called the winter dance a _ball._ And, like, have you seen his groupies?”

“Every year, the same thing,” Jon says, amused. “A new group of freshmen who can be brainwashed into give him the love he needs.”

“I know, and even worse is-” she waves a hand wildly, knocking over a bottle of some expired cleaner. “Oh, shit, wait-” the light from her phone careens wildly as she tries to catch it.

The press of her across his thigh when she leans over is having an _effect_ on him.

“Leave it,” Jon tells her, hoping she doesn’t realize exactly what that effect is. This whole thing is embarrassing enough.

“Yeah,” Sansa says, blowing a piece of hair out of her eyes and finally sitting upright again. “What was I... yeah, okay, like, have you _smelled_ him? His cologne’s stronger than Martell’s.”

Which is saying something. Everyone knows when Martell’s coming, because they can smell his arrival about ten minutes before he arrives.

“Hey,” Jon protests, more out of a moral obligation to defend everyone who, like him, wears cologne- than to actually defend Harry Hardyng. “Don’t knock cologne. I like cologne.”

“Yeah, but you don’t actually bathe in it,” Sansa tells him, scorn positively dripping from that sentence, and that delivery is just so magnificent that he can’t find it in himself to refute it.

Instead, Jon shrugs, and settles further against the back of the closet, drawing his bag up and trying to ignore the slide of his legs against Sansa’s. The stinging scent of cleaner’s trying to burn off the hairs in his nose, the closet’s musty enough to give a Kohl’s coat-rack a run for its money, and there’s absolutely no _space,_ but, somehow, Jon doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

He’s so comfortable, actually, that the second period bell completely startles him. Sansa’s surprised, too- she jerks upright, eyes widening, doing an entirely, impressively, accidental imitation of an owl, before she turns for the door.

“Wait,” Jon hears himself say. “Just- check the door. See if there’s anyone there? I need to pack.”

It’s not _quite_ a lie, but neither is it the full truth.

Jon uses the pretext of shoving textbooks into his bag to shift the bag of chocolate cookies from his to Sansa’s, between notebooks so she probably won’t see it during the day. When he’s done, he stands, picks up her bag, and nods.

Sansa pauses, though, before she leaves and turns, her eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“I,” she says, voice low; and then: “Thank you, Jon,” before she presses forwards, lips feather-soft against his cheek, and leaves.

Into the numbed shock that follows _that,_ Jon only wishes he’d had the courage to tell her something other than just shoving cookies into her bag and offering an anonymous card.

For the rest of his day, he walks around to the tune of _how did I become a coward?_ and it’s quite possible one of the saddest days of his life.

**...**

**iv. part the fourth: in which everyone is an awkward teenager, but things manage to, somehow, miraculously work themselves out**

**...**

The next day, Jon is on his way to botany- he’s not one of those unfortunate people who either failed biology or actually _like_ plant parts, thank all the gods- though it isn’t all that bad to TA for, honestly, because it’s not too much work, and it’s a good place to fall asleep when Tyrell’s monotonous drone becomes too much to bear.

But it’s also the only class he shares with Sansa, meaning it’s either wonderful that he gets to spend more time with her or horrifying when he’s managed to put his foot in his mouth.

Today, he’s almost through the door when Sansa’s hand clamps down on his arm. He turns and sees her grim face, and Jon’s first reaction is to think back on everything he’s said over the last week.

“We,” Sansa says ominously, “need to talk.”

Jon frowns, but he lets her drag him over to a nearby copse of trees.

“Flowers of flour?” Sansa demands, as soon as they’re out of sight. _“Flowers of flour,_ Jon?”

Jon blinks, swallows, and attempts the time-honored defense of every beleaguered teenager: he lies.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, far too rapidly to actually be taken seriously. Then, in a somewhat lackluster bid to lessen the damnation in that sentence, he continues: “What are you talking about?”

 _“This,”_ Sansa hisses, holding out the card.

He takes it slowly and inspects it. “Um. Just a question, you know, but why’d you think it was- was me giving this to you?”

“You _signed_ it,” she snaps.

Jon frowns at that, because no, he certainly did not _sign_ the thing, he’s not that monumentally stupid. He looks at the card again, anyways, because there’s the tiniest chance- but, no. All that’s there is the shop-keeper’s curling font, and then, below it, a scrawling script that reads _-your Secret Admirer._

“Still don’t see my name.”

“You’ve been practically living with us forever,” Sansa says, incredulously. “Do you seriously think that I wouldn’t recognize your handwriting?”

“I- no?” Jon asks weakly.

“So you sent it,” she says. “And, I mean, it all makes sense now, you know?”

“What all makes sense?”

“Robb. Arya.” Sansa waves her hands in the air. “How weird everyone has been acting lately. When Theon brought up the dance last week, Robb actually tackled him straight into the ground. For no reason! And Arya’s been bugging me about who I’m going with and she’s never been interested in this stuff in _ever,_ so.” Her eyes narrow on him. “It’s all for you.”

He sighs. “Listen. There’s a story behind it. I promise-”

“If you tell me that you did this as a joke, I’m going to cry.”

“Yeah, no, that’d be more Theon’s thing,” Jon says, and Sansa falters for the first time in their conversation.

“Wait,” she says. “What?”

Jon inhales slowly. He’d thought telling Robb was scary. Telling Sansa how he feels is more painful than, like, watching a hundred buffalo come stampeding towards him in a dead-end canyon, Lion King style. It’s more painful than watching the Lion King, actually, and that movie always leaves him in tears.

“So,” he says. “Robb was the one who told me that you liked tulips. And Arya wanted someone to watch her beat up a guy who’s like four times her size so she brought me there but I ended up punching someone and getting beaten up instead, which meant that when we went to bake the stuff she was doing most of it and I was kinda high on painkillers.”

Jon inhales, exhales, and dives straight back into explaining, because if he stops he’s pretty sure his heart’s going to give out on him, it’s pounding that hard.

“And I know I should’ve said something yesterday but you looked pretty pissed off at Harry and I really didn’t want to push you then so-”

 _“No,”_ Sansa interrupts, eyes large enough to drown any person looking at them. “No, Jon- I don’t care about what happened- I mean, I _do,_ but not right now, I meant-” she bites her lip. Then, slowly, she says, “I meant: did you want to take me to the dance?”

“Well,” says Jon, “I think that’s pretty well-established, don’t you?”

Sansa just looks at him, face turning redder and redder. It takes Jon a moment to realize that there are tears pooling in her eyes, and it’s then that he panics, just a bit, because Sansa doesn’t cry, not easily. The last time he saw her cry was probably right before Robb went and punched Joffrey in the face, and that was years ago.

“No- _no,”_ he says, hurriedly. “Listen, I wanted things to be really good. When I asked you. And. Like. The universe just hates me, you know, and it never worked out, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to ask.”

“I’m confused,” Sansa says, finally, after a long silence that makes his heart palpitate a little.

At that, Jon scrubs a hand over his face. “I, ah, should probably ask you. Now that you know and all. To the dance. Properly.”

 _“I_ should make you ask in front of the entire cafeteria,” she tells him, wiping the tears away furiously. “Serves you right, you jerk, you gave me _hives.”_

“All Robb’s fault,” Jon reminds her.

“Your flowers,” she replies, and, fine, he guesses he can survive asking her out in front of a thousand people. Those hives had looked painful.

“But,” Sansa continues, and her eyes are shining now, more sly than tearful, which is a shift he’ll take in a heartbeat- “if you ask me now…”

Jon’s, like, ninety percent certain he hasn’t moved so fast in his entire life to do anything.

…

They go to the dance in Robb’s antique car, which Sansa bullies from him through copious guilt-tripping. Sansa wears lilies and a gown of pale blue, and Ned Stark hands him a matching silk tie when he walks in the door to pick her up.

(Arya pretends to hang him with it until her mother walks in the door.)

Bran wheels out a cake before they go, a lemoncake with _Congratulations_ written on it before they leave. Neither Jon nor Sansa get a taste of the cake before they have to leave, which is how he knows that it’s Bran’s particularly roundabout way of getting back at him for giving Sansa such a hard time over the past couple weeks.

It’s a good night, in the end- the cake is shitty, and someone’s spiked the punch before they get there so the whole hall already stinks of booze, and the music is trashy enough that Jon knows that some teacher who thinks that jazz is modern music probably made the playlist, but Sansa’s positively beaming, and she doesn’t even wince when he steps on her feet while dancing.

Robb actually does get drunk on the punch, though, and completely forgets about them, driving away with Jeyne Westerling- Jon really doesn’t want to imagine the fights that’ll happen over the next couple days. After a couple hours of Robb being completely missing, they finally decide to walk back- their homes aren’t too far, and while it’s cold the night’s not bad enough to freeze off anything important. The night is beautiful, actually- Jon’s reminded of his father’s hair, when he looks at the bright moonlight.

Which might not be the most romantic thing to think in the history of the world, but Jon can’t be arsed to care, not when they start to kiss each other.

Not when it’s about as perfect as he’d ever imagined.


End file.
